


Warm

by BelowBedlam



Series: Verity [6]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:40:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelowBedlam/pseuds/BelowBedlam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kimani and Dorian beat up a tree for fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm

“Okay. Everyone ready?”

What if a necromancer and a rift-mage decided to dance?

They leave Skyhold and travel down to where the trees grow tall, where the rivers start rushing faster as they reach further down the mountains. The five of them stand beneath a speckled canopy of oaks, if any of them had to guess, the grass beneath their feet swelling green in large swatches before fading to dusty yellow. Spring is still new, the soil still frosted where resolve is weak. There are, at least, enough thawed spaces to sit. And Sera has brought treats that steam in their cozies.

Nashan, a mismatch of fine wool jacket and ratty hat holds her hands up for Cassandra and Sera to take their three paces back, and she hops over her stone marker, eyes bright as any child’s who has been promised a Certain Thing and is finally being given it. “Alright! Let’s see what these two  _educated_  mages can do. What’ve your books taught you?”

Kimani grins at Dorian, who laughs at her as he unties his staff. “Surely nothing a smart one like yourself couldn’t figure out on your own.”

“Don’t say it too loud, Inquisitor! Sacrilege!” Nashan’s eyes dart to Cassandra, who gives a disgusted sigh as she shakes her head. With a shrug, Nashan sits on her chosen log and claps her hands. “Let’s see it, then!”

“Your cousin is demanding. Is this a family trait?” Dorian asks, stretching with stave in hand, and Kimani perks. Her blood is up, her senses are sharp; she can feel Dorian’s magic before she sees it through the green swirl of her own, risen up like tendrils of mist at Nashan’s cajoling. It is slick and chill like the breeze as it curls over her wrists.

“Let’s render her speechless, for all our sakes. These colors clash,” she notes, eying the auras of their magic as they first circle each other, then mingle together.

“And yet it feels like cohesion,” Dorian murmurs, face sharpening as he concentrates.

This is what she misses. She should have been dancing with Dorian from the start.

“You first, dearest,” she says to him, and he nods, bracelets clinking as he rolls his wrists. His staff twirls like a baton before he strikes the butt of it firmly on the ground.

Three shades spring from the grass like flowers, settled like an arrowhead around their summoner. Nashan claps. Sera curses. Cassandra rolls her eyes but her cheeks are pink. She’s excited, too. Or regretting her choice in friends, now that the world’s done ending.

“Ghouls!” Kimani cheers and lifts her hands above her head, feeling her magic roll through her veins like waves. Thin vines of fadestuff rise around Dorian’s shades, swaying with them. Dorian sends one of his forward, and its fadestuff counterpart swells with a crackling energy, keeping pace with it.

Inside, Kimani can nearly hear Dorian breathing. The next time he moves, she takes the same step, half compulsory, half watching. For a minute they do this, swaying in step and grinning at each other as sweat beads their brown foreheads, chilling their faces.

Nashan is enraptured, warm dark eyes following their hands, their feet, the jerk and sway of their manifested magics. Her lips are moving quietly, her smile growing. Sera looks between them and the kid with and laughs nervously, something sweet no doubt bulging her cheek as she watches.

“I need more drama,” Cassandra says, arms crossed. She feigns a stern countenance but she, too, is chewing on something where earlier she had not been. “Hit something. Some _thing_.”

Kimani’s one step ahead of the Seeker for once. “Let’s attack the tree.” She points, to the non-mages’ relief, away from them and to a middle-aged, sickly tree, its bark peeling and discolored gray where corruption’s shot it through. Some sort of fungus, maybe just age. In a moment, it won’t matter. “You move, I’ll follow.”

Dorian’s face lights up, nodding. “And since we are both slaves to spectacle…” He gives a showy grunt, and up pops another shade. Kimani laughs her magic around it, moving in step as Dorian sends them forward.

“Shit!” Nashan yells, risen to her feet as two shades disappear into the tree bark and two float to either side of the tree, growing in height so they mimic young trees themselves. Kimani’s magic glows like lyrium veins, pulsing with the shades’ energy.

“Ready?” Dorian asks, pivoting to one side. Kimani follows, nodding. “Splendid.”

Kimani can feel the shades within the tree expand, the royal purple of their essences eking through, until the fadestuff tendrils slip out after them, pulling the tree inside out as Kimani bends forward to better situate her power. The tall shades reach for branches and begin pulling, until the loud ripping of a tree being eviscerated is drowned out by the cries of surprise from their audience. Sera won’t stop cursing, going shrill when she realizes the tree is also dissolving as its torn. Kimani coughs as the smell of tree fills her nose, rising up from her throat.

Together, they watch a dying tree fall to pieces, eaten and torn. When there is little left but stump, leaf, and ash from a vein of Kimani’s magic turned to fire, they cheer.

“I can always appreciate such focus,” Cassandra says, laughing at Nashan who chatters at Dorian. She’s begun taking things from around Skyhold to tie into her hair: ribbons and small bells and one of Dorian’s rings just now, as he lets her slip it from his finger.

“That was  _wonderful_. But now I’m hungry,” Kimani laughs though she feels a little light, holding her stomach. “And I want…I want  _nug_.” Something gamy and hard to chew, so she could chew for a while. That, or a nice stew to sit heavy and hot and alleviate the chill seeped through her jacket.

“Anything but nug!” Nashan yells. “Do you know how much fucking nug I’ve been eating in this forsaken country? No. I want good, juicy meat.”

“I must agree with her,” Cassandra nods. “Too many field excursions with nothing but nug, Inquisitor.”

“You’re all  _spoiled,_ ” Kimani grins, stretching. The last bits of active magic tingle her skin, and she shivers. “Back to Skyhold then. Cassandra, Sera, thanks for being audience to a pair of show-mages.”

“You are the daughter of a singer, and I demand attention as is my due,” Dorian shrugs. “We don’t eviscerate trees simply for our own amusement.”

“And me?” Nashan demands, hands on her slight hips. Everyone tilts their head at her, still intrigued and already fond of the apostate though she’s not yet been in Skyhold a season.

“Oh, you’re the damned protégé with that set of lungs, Younger.” Bull’s voice booms out from the path they’d come by and everyone turns. Only Nashan jumps. She throws her pack at him on reflex, which he catches, eyebrows raised.

“How are you so big  _and_  so quiet?” She screeches, slinging curses in Rivaini. Still unused to Bull, though part of that’s an unwillingness. Kimani knows. She’s waiting for her cousin to get brave enough to ask about the man she’s chosen, but there’s some respect, some hierarchy, that the kid has yet to breach with her.

When Bull laughs and responds in Rivaini, both she and Nashan cry out.

“Big’un!” Kimani says, pointing accusingly. “You know Rivaini?”

“Enough to get by!” Bull laughs, raising his hands in defense as she flails in disbelief. “What? You never asked!”

“My my,” Dorian murmurs, smoothing back his hair. “The brute keeps on with the surprises.”

“Next, he’ll know Nevarran,” Cassandra says, whirling on Bull when he confirms her suspicions.

“Oh, come off it! He’s a bloody spy, everyone,” Sera says, feigning exasperation. “He’s _supposed_  to know these things? Wouldn’t be that great of a spy otherwise.”

“ _Was_  a spy,” Bull corrects. “Now I’m just your run of the mill, multilingual, roguishly handsome mercenary captain, wondering how the fuck his boss and the Vintiest Vint to ever Vint managed to  _eat a tree_.”

Kimani giggles, both at Bull, and Dorian’s exasperated groan. “We didn’t really eat—”

“You  _ate the tree_ ,” Bull insists, folding his arms. “And I need to know how.”

“Then maybe you need to read the books Dorian gives me,” she suggests slyly. “Or ask the Vintiest Vint himself.”

“Absolutely not, I’m booked!” Dorian declares, reaching for Nashan. The kid blanks for a moment, then shuffles back to his side, buzzing with excitement as Dorian claps her on the shoulder. “You certainly will not find _her_  anytime soon. I’ve not seen such an enthusiastic, observant young lady in ages. We’re going to start learning a thing or two from those wretched books, yes?”

“…can we eat first?  _Not_  the tree,” Nashan cuts her eyes at Bull, and Kimani covers her mouth with her scarf to hide her laughter.

But this is it. Another thing she’s missed. True, joyous laughter and the ability to feel it, lapping at her skin like the kind of magic she conjures. Only this, this is sun-ray type magic, warm on her face and out of her reach; She can only welcome it, arms wide open, while it lasts.

“I wasn’t joking. I actually need to know how you all did that,” Bull falls into step with her as their make their way back to Skyhold. “I need words, sensations. You’ve got me hooked.” In front of them, Sera’s been provoked to loud cursing and falling over her feet, dissolving into half-frightened giggles as she gives strange  looks at whatever Nashan’s produced in her cupped hands. “That’s a good kid. Little scary. Dorian’ll be good for her.”

“That’s my hope,” Kimani nods. “Not every day you can learn from a powerful Tevinter mage.”

“Or the Inquisitor,” Bull adds. “Who is definitely going to explain to her man how the fuck she did that.”

“Spirits,  _yes_. By the end of it, you’ll damn near be able to do it yourself.”

“Let’s not get hasty, now.” Bull slings his arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. “That’s the kind of dance I like the theory of, but not even Ma’am could get me on that dance floor.”

“Idiot,” Kimani smiles, smacking his stomach. In front, the three of them burst into laughter, and Kimani doesn’t know if hearts get fuller than this, if there’s anything more than what she’s found. But it is out of her reach, so instead she shakes her head as Bull yells something untoward for effect, and tilts her face to the sun.


End file.
